BUNBURY'S MEMOIRS OF SIR THOMAS HAMMER, AND SELECTIONS FROM FAMILY

PAPERS.

Tuts is a very agreeable volume, of a novel kind ; containing a memoir of' the most distinguished person belonging to several families of gentle blood, ancient descent, and competent property ; together with brief notices of cadets of the house or gene, a selec- tion from its correspondence, and specimens of the literary talents of the best versifier it produced. To persons some forty or fifty years old, the name of BUNBURY is familiar for sporting and artistical celebrity, as well as for some connexion with the literary and political world. The curious are still acquainted with the merits of BUNBURY the draughtsman ; and the title of baronet, with some intellectual merit in its pos- sessors, has kept the family in that degree of standing in the world of society which is generally accorded to contemporaries. The student of political history knows Sir THOMAS HAMMER, as a Tory of strong principles, but of very cautious if not of trim- ming conduct,—who declined office under HARLEY, but ac- cepted the Speakership, and voted against his creator, to show his power and independent spirit; who headed the moderate Country gentlemen, nicknamed" the flying squadron," during the reign of the First GEORGE, and, after courting the dissatisfied heir- apparent in his father's lifetime, retired from the political stage when the Prince, changed into a King, took up with the Whigs and WALPOLE. The minute reader of literary history is familiar with this same Sir THOMAS as a patron of men of letters, as the editor of the third really annotated edition of SHAKSPEARE, for which he has received the panegyric of JOHNSON, and as figuring in the Dunciad, where BENSON "thrust him by" in a critical competition. To arrive at the tertium quid from these premises, the families of BUNBURY and HAMMER were connected by marriage some century and a half ago: their papers are in the bands of the present Sir HENRY BUNBURY; a natural family feeling has induced him to give their cream to the world; and he has brought to the execution of his task a well-stored and accom- plished mind. The Memoir of Sir THOMAS HAMMER, the great man of the united races, is a very lively and agreeable piece of writing. It narrates clearly, but without dryness, the genealogy of the house of HAMMER; traces succinctly, yet fully, (in a critical sense, per- haps too fully,) the course of events with which the politician was connected; and tells all that documents or tradition has preserved of the private life and personal characteristics of the man. As a compendious view of party tactics at the opening of the last cen- tury, it has great merit ; but its chief permanent literary value is, for the light it throws upon the minutely true touches of POPE'S satirical portrait, which would otherwise have escaped praise.

"There moved Montalto with superior air,"

seems, from the remembrance of an old tenant, to exactly portray the carriage of the quondam Speaker; and Sir HENRY BUNBURY thinks that a hit was intended at his ancestor's suspected trim- ming, in the couplet,

"Courtiers and patriots in two ranks divide, Through both he pass'il, and luno'd from side to side."

But he has overlooked what seem to us still more exact traits— "But as in graceful act, with awful eye,

Composed he stood, bold Benson thrust him by.

The decent knight retired with sober rage."

The" Correspondence" of the volume is of two classes—one from the HAMMER family, one from the BUNBURY. That of Sir THOMAS HAMMER commences in 1706, and closes in 1744. It contains letters from statesmen, generals, politicians, and literary men ; but as they are chiefly on formal business or matters of compli- ment, the value is not considerable. STEELE, in two letters, writ- ten on his expulsion from the House of Commons, maintains his reputation; the Speaker shows his discretion in reply—refusing the applicant, but soothing the man ; and several from PRIOR ex- hibit much vivacity, and contain a few autobiographical particu- lars. The Busiauttv letters approach closer to our own times ; have a higher interest, and a more attractive if not a greater array of names. POPE leads off, in some letters to Lord STRAFFORD, about a wish of Lady Kresu.eit's to remove a monument of his father's in Twickenham Church, anti contain a curiously charac- teristic account of Sir GODFREY'S last hours : and POPR is fol- lowed by BURKE, GARRICK, Mrs. JORDAN, CRABBE, WORDS- WORTH, NELSON; and amongst others, GEORGE Prince of \Vales, touching some blackleg transaction of which he was publicly accused.

The editor has also published extracts front a private pin- money account-book of Sir THOMAS HAMMER'S first wife, a widow of the first Duke of GRAFTON; from which one may gather the expenses and guess the habits of a lady of fashion almost one hun-

tired and fifty years ago, as well as learn something of prices, Thus, green tea was 24s. per lb.; coffee 6s., and chocolate 58.6d ; cambric was 10s. a yard; an advertisement in the "Courant, about a watch-ease" 3s. 6d.; brandy, Is. 3d. a quart; hair- cutting, 21s. 6d. In comparing the greater part of these prises with those of the present day, an allowance must also be made for the greater cheapness of necessaries at that period,—a striking proof of the stimulating effect of demand in increasing supply, and of the general advantage which follows improvements in any kind of production.

Besides these features, there is a biographical notice of (" coa. sin") General LEE, so celebrated in the American War of Inds- pendence,—very characteristic of the man, but unduly deprecia- tory of WASHINGTON ; some very clever occasional verses by a Mr. SOAME, known in his day, we suppose, at the nniversity and about town as a man of wit; and an elaborate account of France in 1648, written during his exile after the Civil Wars, by Sir THOMAS HAMMER, the Speaker's grandfather. This is a very able document, drawn up with great care and exactness, with it judicious noting of the varying authorities on which the facts rest. This Sir THOMAS evidently possessed a plain, homely, but very sensible mind; not deeply learned, perhaps, but well in- structed. His intellect was not of the schools, but of the world, though he was a man of reading too. In addition to all thit,. there are some extracts from a manuscript romance of one of the NORTHS.

As the volume is miscellaneous, so shall be our extracts. Here, from the Memoirs, is a portrait of weak and selfish politicians, that will do for almost any age.

Though the dismissal of Godolphin had been preceded by a succession of affronts levelled at him and the Duke of Marlborough, yet it was not till the Treasurer was thus unceremoniously thrust out of office, that his Whig col- leagues appear to have been fully aware of their danger. Up to this time the ambiguity and the dexterous duplicity of Harley seem to have been successful in veiling from them the full extent of the influence which he had acquiled over the Queen, and the wide-spreading changes which he meditated. Even now, if Marlborough had freely throwu up the command of the army, and Somers, Cowper, and the Whigs, had at the same moment relinquished their offices, the intrigue might have been nipped in the bud : but the great cantons clung to command and emolument, and some of the Whigs had wilfully shut their eyes to the insult levelled at their leaders, in the base hope of making terms for their own advantage. Harley was totally unprepared for a sudden and general resignation: his plans seem to have been laid with the view of splitting and breaking up the opposite party by degrees, rather than with that of overthrowing the administration bodily, and encountering the united enmity of their opposition. Thus he was cajoling some with professions of a desire to form a mixed government, while he IVA9 prompting affronts to others in the hope of their resigning in disgust. Ile plucked but a leaf at a time, and ven- tured only by degrees to dismiss those who stood most in the way of his am- bition. This spirit of management, of gradual encroachment and ostensible moderation, was continued even after the resignation of the Lords Somers Ma

Cowper, and of neatly all their coadjutors. • • a

Yet Harley was not a Tory ; his early impressions had been those of the ad- verse patty; and as he had mixed with both factions, it is not unlikely that he should have discovered in both a proportion of wavering and venal men, whom he hoped to draw together under the banner of the Court, and establish for himself a Premiership independent of the more stubborn and conscientious leaders of either party. Harley, therefore, was probably sincere, when he pro- fessed a desire to form a mixed government; he wished to compose his cabinet of men who should be free from the ties of party, regardless of political prin- ciples, and uuited only in their subserviency to him. Even in restoring his former colleague, the eloquent and accomplished St. John, to a post in the new administration, be appeals to have felt an early misgiving of the danger to his own power which might he generated by the daring character and brilliant talents of his Tory friend. But the project of forming a mixed administration out of the two parties was disappointed.

FAMILY PAPERS.

In the houses of British gentlemen there must exist large collections of papers, forgotten or neglected, which, if they were brought to light, might extend or vary our views on many subjects of historical, biographical, or lite- rary interest. These hidden sources of information are cut off, through neglect or accident, as time rolls on, or the recollections of the proprietors decay : one anecdote will suffice as an example. The late Earl of Clancarty, when still in his boyhood, had found access to a chest in his graodfather's house in Ireland, cootaining a vast quantity of French letters addressed to his ancestor, Mr. Le Poer, by his dear friend Count Antoine Hamilton, who had kept up a constant correspondence with him for many years, and had written all that passed under his eye in the court and camps of Louis the Fourteenth. How Hamilton would have described these scenes, and the characters that figured in them, my readers may well imagine. The young man was enchaoted with the letters ; but at the time of his grandfather's death he was unfortu- timely travelling on the Continent. On his return to Ireland, he made eager inquiries after the box ; and with sonic difficulty he ascertained that it had been removed a year or two before to the house of an old female relation. As soon as his business left him leisure, Lord Clancarty posted away to his aunt's ream. deuce. She remembered something of there being such a box: ' Oh yes, it contains a great heap of old French letters ; it is in the cellar.' To the cellar Lord Clancarty repaired ; and there he found, indeed, the well-remembered box, but falling to pieces from the effects of damp, and containing only a pulp of mouldy fragments, on which the writing could no longer be distinguished. And thus pet ished the correspondence of Antoine Hatuiltou!

FRENCH PNICEDENCY AND POLITINESS (1648).

No duke, marquis, count, or baron (except bee bee also a peere of the realme), hath any privilege by his title above the rest of the gentlemen, besides precedence or place. which, they ordinarily take according to the antiquity of their houses, or as they are descended from ancestors that have borne great offices in ye etate or commands in arrives, and rod according to the (late of their creations or their honours, as the English way is; for some counts take place of marquises ; but they avoid as much as they can all disputes of this nature, by contending who shall exceede one another in curtesie and humility, every one preferring another before himself in his owne house or coach, and in indifferent places, by a freedome of going in and out as they are next the doore and sitting at meales at round tables, and the like."

There is a deeply interesting letter from CRABBR to BURKS, to give "some further account" of himself; which contains, per- haps, more of the real spirit of autobiography than the narrative of his sons, though not so particular. Here is his own state- ment of his condition after he had abandoned physic and come up to London to seek his fortune.

" My father, some years since, attended at the House of Commons on some election business, & he was also with the minister ; I recollected to have /lewd bum speak with some pleasure of Lord North's condescension and affability ; and renouncing physic, I resolved to apply for employment in any department that I should be thought qualified for. I drew up a long and labour'd account of my motives for this application, Es to prove my ignorance in the proper method of managing such applications, I accompanied my petition with a vo- lume of verses, which I beg'd leave to submit to his Lordship's perusal. I was admitted to Lord North no my second calling, and treated with more attention than I now should expect, though with none of that affability I had hero led to hope for; what I still wonder at, is the civil part of his Lordship's behavior. Bly request was idle and unreasonable ; he might, with the greatest propriety, Lave dismiss'd me inetantly ; but, whether through want ot thought or with an inclination to punish me, he gave me hope, was sorry for my circumstances, inquired who could recommend me. and was sati lied with those I named : he ordered we to apply again. and fixed a day. I am even now astonished at this unnecessary and cruel civility ; it has greatly added to the inconverliencea I now labour under, besides the anxiety of a long attendance growing daily mole hopeless; for not only on the day fixed, but on all other days, I went legularly to Downing Street, but from any first to my last interview with his Lordship were three mouths. I had only a variation in the mode of answer as the porter was more or lees inclined to be civil ; the purport of all was the same. I wrote and entreated his Lordship to accept or refuse me : I related my extreme poverty and my want of employment, but without effect. I again beg'd him to give some message to his servant, by which I might be certain that 1 had nothing further to hope for : this also was ineffectual. At last I had courage to offer so small a sum as half-a-crown, and the difficulty vanished : his Lord- ship's porter seas now civil, and his Lordship surly; he disiniss'il me instantly, and with some severity.

" I hail now recourse to my rhymes, and sent a hasty production to Mr. Dodsley ; who returned it, observing that he could give 110 consideration for it, not because it wanted merit, but the town wanted attention : he was very obliging in his reply, for I am now convinced it does want merit. 111r. Becket returned me a similar answer to an applicatiou of the: same kind. I yet indulged a boyish opinion of my productions, and determined to publish : fortunately, however, I had hitherto cow:wird my name, and I continued to do so. Nichols, who hail printed some remains of Dryden and other poets, was for this reason fixed upon to usher nay piece on the world : he printed two hundred and fifty copies of an 'Epistle to the Authors of the Monthly Review,' which I believe are now in the warehouse of Mr. Payne the bookseller, as I never heard of any sale they had. Aly patrons spoke of my poem rather favourably ; but Dies". the Critical Reviewers trim'd me handsonily ; and though I imputed this in a great measure to envy, I was very glad that I had not exposed my mune on the occasion.

"mow began to think more humbly of my talents: disappointment dimi- nished my pride and increased my prudence. I solicited a subscription. Mr. Nassau, the late Member for 11Ialdon, was well known to me; and this led me to apply to his brother for a permission to prefix his name to a dedication. Lord Rochdale assented; but bade me hope inure from the merit of my productions than that permission. I conveyed my proposals to my friends, and obtained about one hundred and fifty names, chiefly at fleecier, which are since increased, and are something more than two hundred. I have acquainted these people with the alteration in my intention; but I am desired to send illy poem in what- ever manner it comes out ; and this is that certainty I spoke of to Mr. Dothrley. During a long interval betwixt my disappointment at Downing Street and that necessity which compelled me to write to you, Sir, it would he painful to Inc and tedious to you to relate the distress I felt and the progress of my despair : I knew that my subscribers would not more than pay for the printing their vo. /ernes. I was contracting new debts, and unable to satisfy old demands. I lived in terror, was imposed upon, 84 submitted to insults, and at length so threatened, that I was willing to make use of any expedient that would not in- volve me in guilt as well as vexation. I could accu-e myself but of folly and imprudence, and these lemsen'il by inexperience; and I thought that if my cir- cumstances were known, there would be found some to relieve me. I looked as well as I could into every character that offered itself to my view, & resolved to apply where I fouud the most shining abilities, for I had learued to distrust the humanity of weak people in all stations. Yon, Sir, are well acquainted with the result of my deliberation, and I have in one instance at least reason to ap- plaud any own jedgment.

" It will perhaps be asked how I could live near twelve months a stranger in London, and coining without money. It is not to he supposed I was immediately credited—it is not ; my support arose from another soince. In the very early part of my life, I contracted borne acquaintance, which afterwards became a se- rious connexion, with the niece of at Suffolk gentleman of large fortune. Iler mother lives with her three daughters at Beccles ; her income is but the inte- rest of 1,600/., which at her decease is to be divided betwixt her children. The brother niches her annual income about 100/. : he is a rigid economist, and though I have the pleasure of his approbation, I have not the good fortune to obtain more, nor from a prudent man could I perhaps expect so much. But from the family at 13eccles I have every mark of their attention, and every proof of their disinterested regard. They have from time to time supplied nie with such sums as they could possibly spare, and that they have not done more arose from my concealing the severity or my situation ; for I would not involve in my errors or misfortunes a very generous and very happy family, by which I am received with unaffected sincerity, and where I am treated as a son by a mother who can have no prudential reason to rejoice that her daughter has formed such

a connexion. It is this family I lately visited, & by which I rant, pressed to re- turn ; for they know the necessity there is fur me to live with the utmost fru-

gality, hopeless of my succeeding in town, they invite me to partake of their little fortune, and as I cannot mend my proepects, to avoid making them worse. This, Sir, is my eituatiun."

NELSON ON ORDERS, TO A SOLDIER.

"I consider the great order of all (implied by the commencement of the war) is, to destroy the vserer of the Pi end' : to accomplish dd., 10 the quicke-t and easiest way is the object of all lesser orders; and it it can be proved that a breach of the leaser order is a more strict compliance with the former, then there can be no doubt of the duty of the breach of the lesser order."

ROYAL RACING,

The Prince of Wales to Sir Charles Buttbury.•

"Dear Bunbury-1 found on my arrival in London so many infamous and rascally lies fabricated relative to the affair y1 happened at Newmarket, by republican scribblers, and studiously circulated thin' the country, that I judge • Sir Charles linnbury was one of the stewards, and for many saws one of the most influential ;members of the Jockey Club. The occurrence to which the present letter alludes matte a great noise at the time. One of the Plince of Wales's horses (Escapc) had lost a race which he was expected to win. and had won when he was ex- pected to lose. The sporting world raised a furious clamour, which was reechoed in Sire newspapers and clubs of Loudou. Imputations of lout play were cast very gone- rally on the Prince's jockey (Chiffuey); and there were eveu round prisons so auda- ciously cinposed as to throw tort at his Royal highness himself. Iliac filar lachrymte. it absolutely necessary that these calumnies shd be contradicted in the most authentick manner. After having consulted with many af my friends, I leave what has passed, and the nestle of contradiction, to be discussed between you and my friend Sheridan, who has been so good as to undertake the arrangement of this unpleasant business for me, and whoi is of more consequence than yea can imagine. I am, dear 13unbury, very sincerely yes

"

Canton House, Nov. 6,1791.

" GEORG! P.

"I'S. If you think any further inquiries are necessary respecting Chaney, I only beg you will see such steps taken as you think most proper."